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Unemployment
Unemployment – the Presentation
Ø 1; Definition
Ø 2; The Situation in the European Union
Ø 3; Situation in Austria
Ø 4; Types of employer
Ø 5; Reasons and causes
Ø 6; Effects and Consequents
Ø 7; High risk groups
Ø 8; Solutions
What is unemployment?
Unemployment is always the result,
when the available workplaces cannot adapt to the job seekers. When the number
of persons, who offer their working capacities, exceeds the number of available
workplaces, this leads to a lack in workplaces.
Unemployment has become a serious
economic problem. In societies like ours the majority of people can only make
living by working for others. Many millions of people are both able and willing
to work, but simply cannot find a job. The problem here is, that the types of
workers who are looking for jobs are often different from the types of workers
wanted by the employers.
The Situation in
the EU
Unemployment is one of the biggest problems
in the EU at the moment. More than 18 million people are unemployed in the member
states of the European Union. And it seems that the unemployment rate may grow
because of a recession in the economy. So because of that it is a hot topic
for all political parties in the EU. All those parties try to find new and better
solutions for reducing the number of unemployed people.
The situation in Austria
In Austria we have the problem with
the one of the highest non-wage labour costs.
In future we will have to reduce
these costs.
Here is a statistic of non-wage labour costs in Austria.
The Austrian government already has some
employment projects in process. So, for example young people who left school
and didn't find a workplace have courses of those projects. But my opinion on
these projects is they are done reduce the numbers an unemployment statistics.
The problem isn't solved by doing that. It just seems as if the situation were
be better than it is.
Types of unemployment
We
have to differentiate between a few types of unemployment:
- cyclical unemployment: if a country has an economical boom then people have
jobs, if there is an economical recession people lose jobs
- frictional unemployment: you stop working in December and start your new work
in March, these period between these months is called frictional unemployment
- structural unemployment: in factories > too old machines, cannot produce enough,
sell less products, cannot pay their staff > more unemployed people
- hidden unemployment: dismissed people don’t ask for a new job, they also
don’t register for unemployment benefits, e.g. women after their maternity
leave often stay at home with their children seasonal unemployment:
e.g. tourism-areas, construction sector
Reasons and causes
of unemployment
In the last years there have been many changes concerning the market situation,
technological developments and other parts of the labour market. Firms that
don’t adopt their production program, get a problem, because in the market situation
goods that were sold in former times are not needed anymore.
A typical example is a typewriter.
Until the 1980’s a typewriter was irreplaceable in an office it was the technological
standard in the last 100 years.
But today everybody would laugh
if the technological standard in an office were a typewriter, because nowadays
we live as a computer aided generation.
Another point is that companies
replace workers with machines. The machines work round of the clock and the
machines don’t have to be paid over time. A machine doesn’t break down for a
long time so the costs are cheaper and more calculable.
What is more larger companies often
relocate their company headquarters. They choose a country with lower wages
and lower labour costs. Sometimes they prefer illegal workers or even children
in order to get a higher profit.
But on the contrary job recruits
with a good knowledge of electronics and mechanics, a rising technical competence
and also a broad general education are needed.
As we have a well organized welfare
state where people who are on the dole get unemployment benefits, some people
don’t want to work because they sometimes get even more money than they would
earn when working regularly. I will give you an example: An unemployed person
gets 12 000 ATS unemployment benefits a month and if he works 40 hours per month
illegally so in sum he gets 18 000 ATS. If he worked regularly he would get
16 000 ATS. And would have to work 170 hours every month.
University graduates form a large proportion of the unemployed . One
reason is that many students choose subjects without thinking of the job openings.
Consequences of unemployment
In our society where money means
success the unemployed feel useless and consider themselves a failure.
They are dissatisfied and depressed
and this may lead to alcoholism drug problems and homelessness and even to crime
Especially for families it’s difficult because they don’t have enough money
to afford their basics of life. So because of that that government has to help
financially, but this causes high costs for working people who have to support
the unemployed.
High risk groups
There are some
high-risk groups, for example youths, women with little children after their
maternity leave or elderly people aged 50 and over. Lots of those people can't
find a (good) job.
Young people are part of the high-risk
group because in most cases they do not have any practical experience and there
are lots of young people searching for the same few jobs. That is why there
is a high selection rate on the job market. Firms want to employ young people
with lots of experience who want to work almost 24 hours a day and earn just
a little pocket money.
Women in general, but especially
women with little children who want to work again after their maternity leave
are another high-risk group.
Their problem is that the probability
of their needing time off to nurse sick children is very high, especially if
they have little kids. Another problem is that those women haven't worked for
the time of their and there might be new trends, new developments or things
like that.
The last high-risk group is the
large group of over 50 year old people. Their problem is that they cost too
much. If a firm employs younger workers they don't have to pay as much as they
would for an older person. That is why they are fired. And it is almost impossible
for those people to find a new work place.
Solution of unemployment
Possible solutions: Early retirement
Job-sharing
New jobs (new economy )
A general reduction of working hours
Reduction of overtime
It is very hard to find good solutions
in the long run. Some ideas such as job-sharing or early retirement are in discussion.
But my opinion on that is that both, job-sharing and early retirement aren't
the right way. Because if you share your job you won't earn enough money to
afford the basics of life for your family.
Early retirement sounds nice but
it means a huge amount of costs for all the other working people who have to
pay for that. So this can't be the right way, I suppose.
A good solution would be the attendance
of further training courses, so that unemployed people are trained to find a
new job and learn new skills.The only problem about that are the costs, which
are very high and the question is who is going to pay them.
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